Charles Dickens - Biography and Works. Search Texts, Read Online. Discuss. Charles Dickens Biography of Charles Dickens Charles Dickens (1812-1870), English Victorian era author wrote numerous highly acclaimed novels including his most autobiographical David Copperfield (1848-1850); ï¿½Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.ï¿½ As a prolific 19th Century author of short stories, plays, novellas, novels, fiction and non, during his lifetime Dickens became known the world over for his remarkable characters, his mastery of prose in the telling of their lives, and his depictions of the social classes, mores and values of his times. Some considered him the spokesman for the poor, for he definitely brought much awareness to their plight, the downtrodden and the have-nots.

He had his share of critics like Virginia Woolf and Henry James , but also many admirers, even into the 21st Century. Gilbert Keith Chesterton wrote numerous introductions to his works, collected in his Appreciations and Criticisms of the works of Charles Dickens (1911) and in his highly acclaimed biography Charles Dickens (1906) he writes: He was the voice in England of this humane intoxication and expansion, this encouraging of anybody to be anything. Critic John Forster (1812-1876) became his best friend, editor of many of his serialisations, and official biographer after his death, publishing The Life of Charles Dickens in 1874. Scottish poet and author Andrew Lang (1844-1912) included a letter to Dickens in his Letters to Dead Authors (1886). Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) in his Little Journeys (1916) series follows in the footsteps of Dickens through his old haunts in London.

George Gissing (1857-1903) also respected his works and wrote several introductions for them, as well as his Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (1898) in which he writes: Humour is the soul of his work. Like the soul of man, it permeates a living fabric which, but for its creative breath, could never have existed. While George Orwell (1903-1950) was at times a critic of Dickens, in his 1939 essay Charles Dickens he, like many others before, again brought to light the author still relevant today and worthy of continued study: Nearly everyone, whatever his actual conduct may be, responds emotionally to the idea of human brotherhood. Dickens voiced a code which was and on the whole still is believed in, even by people who violate it. It is difficult otherwise to explain why he could be both read by working people (a thing that has happened to no other novelist of his stature) and buried in Westminster Abbey.

Charles John Huffman Dickens was born on 7 February, 1812 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England (now the Dickens Birthplace Museum) the son of Elizabeth nï¿½e Barrow (1789-1863) and John Dickens (c.1785-1851) a clerk in the Navy Pay Office. John was a congenial man, hospitable and generous to a fault which caused him financial difficulties throughout his life. He inspired the character Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield (1849-1850). Charles had an older brother Frances, known as Fanny, and younger siblings Alfred Allen, Letitia Mary, Harriet, Frederick William known as Fred, Alfred Lamert, and Augustus Newnham. When Dickensï¿½ father was transferred to Chatham in Kent County, the family settled into the genteel surroundings of a larger home with two live-in servantsï¿½one being Mary Weller who was young Charlesï¿½ nursemaid. Dickens was a voracious reader of such authors as Henry Fielding, Daniel Defoe , and Oliver Goldsmith .

When he was not attending the school of William Giles where he was an apt pupil, he and his siblings played games of make-believe, gave recitations of poetry, sang songs, and created theatrical productions that would spark a lifelong love of the theatre in Dickens. But household expenses were rising and in 1824, John Dickens was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea Prison. All of the family went with him except for Charles who, at the age of twelve, was sent off to work at Warrenï¿½s Shoe Blacking Factory to help support the family, pasting labels on boxes. He lived in a boarding house in Camden Town and walked to work everyday and visited his father on Sundays. It was one of the pivotal points in Dickensï¿½ education from the University of Hard Knocks and would stay with him forever. The idyllic days of his childhood were over and he was rudely introduced to the world of the working poor, where child labour was rampant and few if any adults spared a kind word for many abandoned or orphaned children. Many of his future characters like Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Philip Pirrip would be based on his own experiences.

The appalling working conditions, long hours and poor pay typical of the time were harsh, but the worst part of the experience was that when his father was released his mother insisted he continue to work there. While he felt betrayed by and resented her for many years to come, his father arranged for him to attend the Wellington House Academy in London as a day pupil from 1824-1827, perhaps saving him from a life of factory work and setting him on the road to becoming a writer. In 1827 the Dickens were evicted from their home in Somers Town for unpaid rent dues and Charles had to leave school. He obtained a job as a clerk in the law firm of Ellis and Blackmore. He soon learned shorthand and became a court reporter for the Doctors Commons. He spent much of his spare time reading in the British Museumï¿½s library and studying acting. In 1830 he met and fell in love with Maria Beadnell, though her father sent her to finishing school in Paris a few years later. In 1833, his first story of many, ï¿½A Dinner at Poplar Walkï¿½ was published in the Monthly Magazine.

He also had some sketches published in the Morning Chronicle which in 1834 he began reporting for and adopted the pseudonym ï¿½Bozï¿½. At this time Dickens moved out on his own to live as a bachelor at Furnivalï¿½s Inn, Holborn. His father was arrested again for debts and Charles bailed him out, and for many years later both his parents and some of his siblings turned to him for financial assistance. Dickensï¿½ first book, a collection of stories titled Sketches by Boz was published in 1836, a fruitful year for him. He married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of the editor of the Evening Chronicle on 2 April, 1836, at St. Lukeï¿½s in Chelsea. A year later they moved into 48 Doughty Street, London, now a museum.

The couple would have ten children: Charles Culliford Boz (b.1837), Mary (Mamie) (1838-1838), Kate Macready (b.1839), Walter Landor (b.1841), Francis (Frank) Jeffrey (b.1844), Alfred Tennyson (b.1845), Sydney Smith (b.1847), Henry Fielding (b.1849), Dora Annie (1850-1851), Edward Bulwer Lytton (b.1852). Also in the same year, 1836, Dickens became editor for Bentleyï¿½s Miscellany of which Pickwick Papers (1836-1837) was first serialised. Thus began a prolific and commercially successful period of Dickensï¿½ life as a writer. Most of his novels were first serialised in monthly magazines as was a common practice of the time.

Oliver Twist between 1837 and 1839 was followed by Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), and Barnaby Rudge (1841). Dickensï¿½ series of five Christmas Books were soon to follow; A Christmas Carol (1843), The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man (1848). Dickens had found a readership who eagerly anticipated his next installments. After the death of Catherineï¿½s sister Mary in 1837 the couple holidayed in various parts of England. After Dickens resigned from Bentleyï¿½s in 1839, they moved to 1 Devonshire Terrace, Regentï¿½s Park. Further travels to the United States and Canada in 1842 led to his controversial American Notes (1842). Martin Chuzzlewit was first serialised in 1843.

The next year the Dickens traveled through Italy and settled in Genoa for a year of which his Pictures From Italy (1846) was written. Dombey and Son (1846) was his next publication, followed by David Copperfield (1849). In 1850 he started his own weekly journal Household Words which would be in circulation for the next nine years. From 1851 to 1860 the Dickens lived at Tavistock House where Charles became heavily involved in amateur theatre. He wrote, directed, and acted in many productions at home with his children and friends, often donating the money raised from ticket sales to those in need. He collaborated with Wilkie Collins on the drama No Thoroughfare (1867). Novels to follow were Bleak House (1852-1853), Hard Times (1854), and Little Dorrit (1855-1857). In 1856 Dickens purchased Gadï¿½s Hill, his last place of residence near Rochester in Kent County.

He continued in the theatre as well, acting in Wilkie Collins ï¿½ The Frozen Deep in 1857 with actress Ellen Ternan (1839-1914) playing opposite him. The two fell in love and Dickens would leave Catherine a year later. By now Dickens was widely read in Europe and in 1858 he set off on a tour of public readings. A year later he founded his second weekly journal All the Year Round, the same year A Tale of Two Cities (1859) was first serialised. Great Expectations (1860-1861) was followed by Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865). In 1865, traveling back from Paris with Ellen and her mother, they were involved in the disastrous Staplehurst train crash, of which Dickens sustained minor injuries, but never fully recovered from the post-traumatic shock of it. Two years later he traveled to America for a reading tour. His ï¿½farewell readingsï¿½ took place in Londonï¿½s St. James Hall.

Charles Dickens died from a cerebral hemorrhage on 9 June 1870 at his home, Gadï¿½s Hill. He is buried in Poetï¿½s Corner of Westminster Abbey, London, his tomb inscribed thus: ï¿½He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of Englandï¿½s greatest writers is lost to the world.ï¿½ Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish historian and author, upon hearing of his death said: The good, the gentle, high-gifted, ever-friendly, noble Dickensï¿½every inch of him an honest man. Unfinished at his death, The Mystery of Edwin Drood was published in 1870. My father had left a small collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled.

From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time, - they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the Genii, - and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did.ï¿½Ch. 4, David Copperfield Biography written by C.D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc. 2006. All Rights Reserved. The above biography is copyrighted. Do not republish it without permission. Forum Discussions on Charles Dickens Recent Forum Posts on Charles Dickens Charles Dickens Biography - eNotes.com Charles Dickens Biography Trivia Charles Dickens Biography Charles Dickens was described by G. K.

Chesterton as a man who possessed the qualities of a young boy with no boundaries—mischievous and irresponsible, yet passionately alive and relentlessly hopeful. Indeed, this prolific (he wrote novels, novellas, plays, short stories, fiction, and nonfiction) and popular (he was the most requested after-dinner speaker of his time) nineteenth-century author transformed his own life into vibrant, imaginative fiction; he wrote about everything he saw, and because his experiences led him from the depths of the poorhouse to the heights of popularity, his writing established universal appeal. By championing social causes in his works, creating vivid, unforgettable characters, and caring for his audience as much as he did for his pen, Dickens established himself as the immortal author of Victorian England. Facts and Trivia Dickens’ father would make young Charles stand upon a tall stool, sing songs, and create stories for the entertainment of other clerks in the office. Dickens admitted that David Copperfield was his favorite work. It was also his most autobiographical. In Boston, four thousand people gathered at the dock to await the ship that carried chapter seventy-one of Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop.

When the ship arrived, they asked the captain about a beloved character from the novel: “Is Nell dead?” When the affirmative response came back, a collective groan rose up from the massive crowd. At the age of ten, Dickens was forced to work at a factory to pay off his father’s debts. Although Dickens himself spoke of this traumatizing experience only twice in his life, critics and readers agree that the two years he spent there forged much of the material for his later novels. Edgar Allan Poe is said to be the only person who was ever able to predict the conclusion of the complex plots in Dickens’ novels. Article abstract: The most popular novelist of his time, Dickens created a fictional world that reflects the social and technological changes of the Victorian era. Early Life Charles John Huffam Dickens was born at Portsmouth, England, on February 7, 1812, the second of eight children. His father, John Dickens, a clerk in the Naval Pay Office, was always hard-pressed to support his family. Because his father’s work made it necessary for him to travel, Dickens spent his youth in several different places, including London and Chatham.

When he was only twelve years old, his father’s financial difficulty made it necessary for the young Dickens to work in a shoeblacking warehouse while his father was placed in a debtor’s prison at Marshalsea—an event that was to have a powerful influence on Dickens throughout his life. Oliver Twist’s experience in the workhouse is one of the best-known results of what Dickens considered to be an act of desertion by his parents. After his father was released from prison, Dickens was sent to school at an academy in London, where he was a good student. When he was fifteen, he worked as a solicitor’s clerk in law offices and two years later became a shorthand reporter of parliamentary proceedings and a free-lance reporter in the courts. In 1829, he fell in love with Maria Beadnell, the daughter of a banker, but broke with her in 1833. At age twenty-one, he began publishing his Sketches by Boz and joined the Morning Chronicle as a reporter. His first collection of Sketches by Boz appeared in 1836, the same year he began a series of sketches titled Pickwick Papers (1836-1837).

Also in 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of a journalist. As Pickwick Papers became a striking popular success in serial publication, the Dickens phenomenon began, and Dickens was on his way to becoming the most powerful and widely read author in nineteenth century England. Life’s Work With Dickens’ sudden fame came offers of more literary work. He began editing a new monthly magazine for which he contracted to write another serial story, which he called Oliver Twist (1837-1839) and which began to appear while Pickwick Papers was still running. Thus, Dickens started the breakneck speed of writing which was to characterize the energy of his work throughout his life. While Oliver Twist was still running in serial form, Dickens also began publishing Nicholas Nickleby, another great success, first in serial form (1838) and then as a book (1839). Immediately thereafter, he began the serialization of The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841) in a weekly publication, followed soon after by Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of ’80 (1841).

Dickens paused from his writing between 1836 and 1841 to travel in the United States, the result of which was American Notes (1842) and, more important, the serialization of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844), outraging many American readers with its caricature of life in the United States. During the Christmas season of 1843, Dickens achieved one of his most memorable successes with A Christmas Carol, which gave the world the character of Ebenezer Scrooge. The poor circulation of Martin Chuzzlewit was cause enough for Dickens to cease his writing once again for an extended visit to the Continent. Yet the poor reception of A Christmas Carol was not enough to prevent Dickens from publishing two more Christmas stories—The Chimes (1845) and A Cricket on the Hearth (1845). Returning from Italy in 1845, Dickens began editing a new daily newspaper, The Daily News, but resigned from that job after only three weeks.

He began instead the serialization of Dombey and Son (1846-1848), only to begin the serialization of David Copperfield (1849-1850) the following year. During this time, Dickens began working with amateur theatricals as an actor and a director, mostly to benefit literature and the arts. He then began editing the periodical Household Words and writing what many call his most ambitious work, Bleak House, in 1852, which ran for a year and a half. In 1854, Hard Times was published serially in order to boost the failing circulation of Household Words, and soon thereafter, Dickens began serialization of Little Dorrit (1855-1857). At this time, Dickens purchased a home at Gad’s Hill, on the road between London and Dover, but his home life was not to be that of country tranquillity. In 1858, he separated from his wife amid much bad publicity. Also in 1858, Dickens began another major aspect of his professional life—a series of public readings from his own work.

Although he published A Tale of Two Cities in 1859, the public readings in London did not abate. In 1860, he began writing Great Expectations (1860-1861) to increase the circulation of a new weekly, All the Year Round. London readings continued through 1863, when he went to Paris for another series of readings there. Although he was experiencing poor health, Dickens wrote Our Mutual Friend (1864-1866) and performed public readings in London until 1868, when he made his last trip to the United States for a tour of readings which brought him much money but which taxed his already failing health. When Dickens returned to England after several months in the United States, he took up readings again in London, Scotland, and Ireland, in addition to beginning his last work (which he did not live to finish), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870). In 1870, on June 8, after working all day, Dickens suffered a stroke while at his Gad’s Hill home and died the next day. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Summary As any account of his life makes clear, what most characterizes Charles Dickens is the amount of work he produced and the fact that all of it was originally written for serial publication—a demanding way to publish. To keep up with the demand, Dickens was writing constantly. Although audiences followed Dickens’ work as closely as they follow television soap operas today, identifying with his characters as if they were real people and eagerly awaiting each new installment, the fact that Dickens had to keep writing continuously to meet the demands of serialization has made many academic critics scorn his work as popular melodrama catering to the tastes of the masses. Yet the widespread popularity of Dickens, which continues unabated into the late twentieth century, cannot be accounted for so simply. In spite of the fact that Dickens cranked out novel after novel, as if he were a one-man literary factory, he impresses even skeptics as a masterful storyteller and a genius at characterization.

Many critics have tried to account for what might be called the mystery of Dickens: his amazing aptitude for visualizing scenes in concrete detail, his ability to control and develop highly elaborate plots, and most of all, his puzzling method of creating characters that, even as they are obviously caricatures, seem somehow more real in their fictionality than most realistic characters are. Simply to name such characters as Mr. Pickwick, Scrooge, Fagin, and Mr. Micawber is to conjure up images that are destined to remain memorable. The fact that Dickens’ novels have been so easily adapted to film has added to the almost hallucinatory way with which his works are imprinted on the mind of twentieth century readers and viewers. Such scenes as Oliver in the workhouse asking for more gruel, Sydney Carton on the scaffold in A Tale of Two Cities, saying what a far, far better thing he does, and Miss Havisham in her decayed wedding dress in Great Expectations, have become part of the mind and memory of millions of Dickens’ admirers. Dickens drew his inspiration primarily from three sources. First, much of his writing is autobiographical.

One can see the deserted, poverty-stricken child in Oliver Twist, the aspiring young writer in David Copperfield, and the misguided young man in Pip. Second, Dickens wrote about the many social and technological elements of Victorian society. Bleak House is a compendium of Dickens’ knowledge about the complexities of the law courts, just as Martin Chuzzlewit is a satiric overview of Victorian (and American) social absurdities. In such works as Hard Times, Dickens focused on the deficiencies of Utilitarian philosophy of the period, and in Little Dorrit, he turned his attention to the bureaucracy of the business world. Finally, Dickens’ fiction developed out of the same source from which all fiction ultimately springs, that is, the many conventions of fiction itself.

In spite of the fact that Dickens was not highly educated, he was well-read, especially in the wellspring works of storytelling and character-making such as The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji, and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605, 1615), as well as the masterworks of the novel’s beginning in the eighteenth century, such as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), and Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random (1748). Thus, in spite of the fact that Dickens’ characters seem so very real when the reader remembers them, they seem real precisely because they are so artificial; that is, they are pure fictional creations who can exist only in Dickens’ imaginative world. The number of Dickens’ admirers seems to grow each year.

Such adaptations of Dickens’ work as the highly popular musical version of Oliver Twist, the ambitious (day-long) and masterful Royal Shakespeare Company’s stage presentation of Nicholas Nickleby, and the yearly tradition of countless presentations of A Christmas Carol, introduce new readers to Dickens’ works over and over again. There is little doubt that he will continue to be the most popular and influential spokesman of Victorian England, for, in the minds of the majority, Victorian England is Dickens’ England. Bibliography Coolidge, Archibald C., Jr. Charles Dickens as Serial Novelist. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1967. A helpful study of a very important aspect of Dickens’ work: The fact that his writing first appeared in serialization had a great influence on the nature of his narrative. Fielding, K. J. Charles Dickens: A Critical Introduction. London: Longmans, 1958, 2d ed. 1965. One of the best brief studies of both the life and work of Dickens. Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872-1874, rev. ed. 1876.

The first authoritative biography, in three volumes (two in the revised edition), written by a friend and literary adviser of Dickens, and valuable for the many factual details and anecdotes which it includes. House, Humphrey. The Dickens World. London: Oxford University Press, 1941. An important book which helped to initiate the revival of the study of Dickens as a serious novelist; focuses on Victorian social issues in Dickens’ work. Johnson, Edgar. Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph. 2 vols. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952. Rev. ed. New York: Viking Press, 1977. The definitive biography; also contains much very good criticism of Dickens’ work. Leavis, F. R., and Q. D. Leavis. Dickens the Novelist. London: Chatto and Windus, 1970. Focuses on the novels from Dombey and Son through Great Expectations; excellent criticism by two highly respected British critics. Marcus, Steven. Dickens: From Pickwick to Dombey. New York: Basic Books, 1965.

A study of Dickens’ early work, focusing on Victorian cultural life; a stimulating study by a well-known critic of Victorian literature and life. Miller, J. Hillis. Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958. A stimulating study of the creative universe fashioned by Dickens, by one of America’s best-known and most controversial phenomenological critics. Nelson, Harland S. Charles Dickens. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981. Not the usual introductory survey, this study focuses on the way Dickens wrote and published and how the basic elements of his novels engage the reader. Wilson, Angus. The World of Charles Dickens. New York: Viking Press, 1970. Perhaps the best single-volume study of Dickens’ life as well as his work as a popular novelist.

More Content: Biography (hide) STAGE - 'NICHOLAS NICKLEBY' ARRIVES AS A TWO-PART, 8 1 2 HOUR DRAMA - NYTimes.com STAGE: 'NICHOLAS NICKLEBY' ARRIVES AS A TWO-PART, 8 1 2 HOUR DRAMA By FRANK RICH Published: October 5, 1981 AND so, after eight-and-a-half hours of ''The Life & Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby,'' we go home with an indelible final image. The time is Christmas, and a grand Victorian happy ending is in full swing. Carolers are strewn three stories high about the stage, singing ''God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.'' Families have been reunited, couples joined together, plot ends neatly tied. And our young picaresque hero, Nicholas, has vanquished the two enemies who have stalked him for five acts - his usurious uncle, Ralph, and the cruel Yorkshire schoolmaster, Wackford Squeers. But is all right with the world? Not entirely. For as Nicholas sings along with everyone else, he spots, crouching far downstage center, a starving boy.

At first our hero tries to ignore the sight, but he can't. So he walks over to the youth, lifts him up into the cradle of his arms, and then stands to face the audie nce. As the singing and lights dim, Nicholas stares and stares at us - his eyes at once welling with grief and anger -and what do we feel? What we feel, I think, is the penetrating gaze of Charles Dickens, reaching out to us from the 19th century, imploring us to be like his hero at this moment - to be kinder, better, more generous than we are. ''If men would behave decently, the world would be decent'' - that's how Orwell distilled Dickens's moral vision. It's a vision that can still inflame us - and does - at the very end of the Royal Shakespeare Company's marathon dramatization of Dickens' third novel. This climax is one of maybe a dozen such moments in this production, which officially arrived yesterday at the Plymouth. Working with 39 members of a great acting company, two ceaselessly imaginative directors, Trevor Nunn and John Caird, periodically reveal that they can indeed translate Dickens into pure theater.

To show how ''wealthy and poor stood side by side'' in a nascent industrial world, for instance, they give us a horrifying, mimed image of lower-class humanity pressed flat against the window of a restaurant where the wealthy dine. When Nicholas is swallowed up by the city's ''huge aggregate of darkness and sorrow,'' the directors choreograph a mob that all but eats him alive. Such staging techniques are not new in this post-Brechtian era -one thinks of Paul Sills and the Becks - but they are at times exquisitely consolidated here to root out the soul of Dickens's book, and to recreate the cinematic techniques (from cross-cutting to dissolves) of his narrative. The novel's atmosphere - that dense and sweeping social canvas of a Victorian universe - also receives its due. With the aid of unbeatable costume and lighting designers, John Napier and David Hersey, the directors effortlessly move us from teeming London to the dark gloom of Yorkshire to the bucolic countryside of Devonshire. The set consists only of platforms, scaffolding, cagelike balconies and ratty bric-a-brac, but it extends by catwalks and planks through both levels of the theater.

When the actors fan out into every nook and cranny -sometimes merging together to impersonate coaches or even walls - bodies and light sculpture the large space until a vanished England falls into place. What does not fall into place, I must report, is a sustained evening of theater. We get an outsized event that sometimes seems in search of a shape. While the high points of this ''Nicholas Nickleby'' are Himalayan indeed, they are separated by dull passages which clog the production's arteries. The problem is not the length of work per se - it's the use of that length. In adapting a long novel to the stage, the British playwright David Edgar has chosen a strategy that is as questionable as it is courageous. Unlike so many stage and film adapters of Dickens, Mr. Edgar has gone whole hog: he gives us at least a glimpse of every plot development a nd character (over 50 of substance and 200 altogether) in the origin al book. But how is this possible, even in an adaptationof this lengt h?

Many of the characters in Dickens's novels - especially th e subsidiary ones - are not revealed through dialogue oraction, but b y the steady accretion of the writer's vitally observed details. In t he theater, those details can only be conveyed if each actor is give n enough stage time to communicate them through performance - or if a narrator reads Dickens's descriptions aloud. While Mr. Edg ar does use narration here (distributed cleverly among the entire ca st), he generally uses it to fill in plot rather than to supply cha racterizations (except in the case of a few major figures). And eight-and-a-half hours is not enough time for all the minor charact ers to occupy center stage as they can in a 800-page novel. So Mr. Edgar gives some of them short shrift. The milliner Manatalini and her profligate husband, the Keswigs family, the cameoartist Miss La Creevy and the accountant Tim Linkinwater - among others - receive television's Masterpiece Theater treatment: they appear in proper costume, in animated tableaus, but they whisk away so fast that they blur.

The difficulty is not that they don't measure up to the book - that's not required - but that they don't add up to anything much at all, whether one has read Dickens or not. 1 Review: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens | Add to favorites Peter Hinton is onto something: with a single bold stroke, he has lifted the NAC English Theatre from its previous status as a roadhouse that exhibited and dabbled in theatre productions by the grace of itinerant mercenaries and long-suffering local professional actors and theatre techies to a new stature as sustainer and developer of actors by virtue of his establishment of The Fortieth Anniversary English Theatre Acting Company , members of which performed the current production. The company’s first venture, a presentation of Dickens’ own script for A Christmas Carol, I saw last evening in a full house that gave it an enthusiastic standing ovation. Hinton took the unusual step of introducing the presentation casually, from the stage, coffee in hand, making the point that the new Company is a reincarnation of the original company, which ceased operation at the NAC twenty-five years ago.

I must congratulate Artistic Director Peter Hinton and the NAC English Theatre and NAC Management for taking this brave and positive step towards developing a more fully expressed creative impulse for English Theatre at the NAC. Now, the production itself: When it comes to A Christmas Carol, adults consciously enter the realm of children, who love to be read to, especially so that they can hear familiar stories retold over and over. Dickens’ tale of recalcitrant selfishness and redemption is a melodrama in the best sense: the action is serious, emotional, and depicted directly, in the most obvious terms. Dickens was very connected to the plight of the poor in his London, and presented his case so vividly that the city Council, reacting to Oliver Twist, passed a resolution aimed at assisting the poor in one of his fictitious locations. While the modern audience is perhaps less to be fooled by Dickens’ inventions, it is just as taken in emotionally by the verisimilitude of his presentation of joy, sorrow, need, cruelty and virtue.

While this production used Dickens’ script, slightly amended, it certainly did not use Victorian techniques of theatre; rather, it effectively used expressive ensemble movement, vibrant choral singing, story theatre, surrealistic lighting, character driven scene changes, and some technically marvelous fog, as well as a rather unique use of costume to great comic effect in one of Scrooge’s latter scenes. Eo Sharp’s costumes, although perhaps not as dirty as one would expect of Victorian wear, especially that worn by the particularly poor, still was very evocative of the period. I was particularly impressed by her costume for the very tall and slender Alex McCooeye: in many instances the tableau or scene in which Mr. McCooeye appeared was all the more striking because of his appearance, particularly the long black ribbon tied about and dangling from his hat. In many cases, costume was the main realistic device for establishing the setting and the period, and even the atmosphere. Many elements of the setting had ritualistic qualities for example the horizontal door which was pivotted variously and with great solemnity and effect. The highly reflective section of floor signaled the surrealism of many of the elements that occurred upon or near it.

The huge window, at the back stage centre, was used to surreal effect particularly when dramatically lit. The cast of twenty-one, led by Stephen Ouimette as Ebenezer Scrooge, is as versatile and remarkable a group as Director Hinton could wish for. If there is an adjustment that an audience watching this production must make, it is that we are used to seeing these characters close up on the screen; it took me a while to adjust to the fact that Scrooge was so tiny, and Tiny Tim even tinier. Once I made that adjustment, I found myself being quite drawn in by the whole thing. This is an ensemble that knows how to create positional emphasis, how to vary the pitch of a scene, and how to look natural while doing it. There were delightful and impressive characters, really satisfying depictions of familiar scenes in which not a note rang false. That is not easy to do, as we all have our expectations of scenes we have pictured in our minds as we have read the story, scenes we have watched unfold on the screen; the other side of this is that while remaining true to our expectations, the performance must still fresh, even unexpected. This production was certainly satisfying in that regard.

I might cite Scrooge’s extended dressing scene on Christmas morning, as I’m sure most audience members remember that scene quite vividly; however I am thinking of the ghost of Jacob Marley, all in white, dragging white chains and white boxes and ledgers, with that marvelous crepe concoction binding his jaw to his head. I’m thinking of the group divvying up Scrooge’s goods. I am thinking of the game of Blind Man’s Bluff. Mr. Fezziwig’s party. The list could go on. This production is an excellent beginning for the National English Theatre Acting Company. I am looking forward to the production of Mother Courage and Her Children, by the Company. I wonder if Nicholas Nickleby is a possibility in the future. They certainly seem capable of it. Performance viewed: December 19, 2009 7:30 pm running time: 1 hour 50 minutes no intermission The National Arts Center English Theatre Company presents A Christmas Carol

Question: In which Dickens' novel does Mr Crummie's Acting Company appear?
Answer: Nicholas Nickleby